Competing Visions
Subtitle: Aesthetic Invention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture, 1867-1918
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: January 30, 1998
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 524
ISBN-13: 9780262133340
Subjects: European history: c 1750 to c 1900; c 1800 to c 1900; c 1900 - c 1914; 19th Century Architecture; 20th Century Architecture; Architecture; Central Europe; History - General; International Architecture - European; Architecture / History; 19th century; 20th century; Europe, Central
Description: In this first comparative study of the architecture of the countries that defined the Austro-Hungarian monarchy from 1867 to 1918, Akos Moravanszky discusses the aesthetic innovations of Central European architects and the role that architecture played in the development of modern culture.

By studying the crucial debates about modernity, national identity, tectonic from, and the social role of the architect, Moravanszky does justice to a story of enormous cultural complexity, rather than viewing architectural history as a linear story of buildings leading to a monolithic modern form.

This book unfolds the wide spectrum of problems that Central European artists and architects faced in the first decades of the century in such centers as Budapest, Prague, Brno, Vienna, Cracow, Zagreb, and Ljubljana. It also examines the changing interpretation of architecture by the critics of the time.